"Using my giant plastic bubble, I'll destroy city after city, until your entire nation is on its knees before me!"-The Red Skull, shortly before learning that as death traps go, bubbles blow,Êin Tales of Suspense 90 (1967).

November 05, 2004

Avengers 503 (2004)

Marvel Comics used to love its readers. Stan Lee, and to a lesser extent, his first few waves of successors, tried to make the reader feel they were part of the big happy Marvel family. That sense of belonging vibe went a long way toward making Marvel the marketing empire it is today.

But the people in charge of Marvel today can’t be bothered to hide their contempt for readers. Avengers 503, the concluding part in the so-called “Disassembled” story, was the final straw for me. This book is a hate-letter from start to finish by writer Brian Bendis and his superiors. I get it. Marvel hates me, the reader. I won’t let the door hit me in the ass on my way out.

The first few parts of this story involved a lot of killing of Marvel characters. The concluding episode confirms that these deaths had no narrative purpose. It was just done for Brian Bendis to show how cool he is – he can kill decades old stars just to get attention.

In Avengers 503, Bendis reveals that Scarlet Witch was the bad guy behind everything. Wanda, we are told to swallow, lost her grip on reality. Which might have been a decent storyline with some foreshadowing or a more coherently written struggle. But Bendis is all about the flash. Instead of a coherent plot, we get the Hal Jordanization of Scarlet Witch. A sudden, inexplicable and complete change from long-time noble hero to mass murdering lunatic. Hey, it worked so well for DC, why shouldn’t Marvel jump on the bandwagon?

Worse yet, Bendis couldn’t even be bothered to make this final issue an Avengers story. Dr. Strange, who is not an Avenger, shows up to tell the Avengers that Wanda is the bad guy. They were too d-u-m-b to figure anything out themselves. Then Dr. Strange defeats Wanda alone while the Avengers sit around and watch. Let me repeat that because it bears noting. In the final issue of the Avengers, the Avengers do nothing. They watch. The Avengers are the Watchers, the Voyeurs, the Inferior Five Hundred. Take your pick.

Remember that this story called for the gathering of all Avengers ever? Want to know why? So do I. The answer isn’t in these pages.

Not bad enough? How about Spider-Man showing up simply to make some bigoted commentary. That Bendis sure has a handle on the characters he’s inherited doesn’t he? If it’s one thing Spidey has always been, it’s a bigot. Spider-Man. Marvel’s poster child for intolerance. Anyone want to take a contrary position to my conclusion the current administration of Marvel has nothing but contempt for its readers who are meaningless gnats in a toy and movie empire?

So the story ends with the Avengers destroyed (we know this not because they're all dead or something is preventing the survivors from regrouping - we know it because Carol Danvers tells us it is so – that’s right, they’re not Avengers, they’re the Mighty Quitters) and a mindless Scarlet Witch who has committed about 4 murders or so, all of which will need to be explained away when (not if) Marvel decides to use her as a hero again.

But wait. There’s one last great big kick in the ass Marvel has for its readers. Marvel actually published a letters page. Why you ask? To mock and belittle the letter writers of course. That’s the new Marvel ‘tude – doesn’t it just scream hip? The letters page crows “if you hated ‘Disassembled,’ you’ll probably like NEW AVENGERS #1”, calls the killing of Hawkeye evidence that Marvel is “hardcore”, prints a few fanboy letters simply to post mocking responses and, most egregiously, publishes a heartfelt letter from a cancer survivor thanking Marvel for not killing Scarlet Witch in issue 502. WTF? Given what Marvel did to Scarlet Witch in this issue, the only reasonable conclusion is that Marvel printed the letter to ridicule the writer. It is the lowest blow Marvel has taken at a reader yet.

I’ve had all I can take. Maybe there’s a market for readers who enjoy it when writers and publishers shit on them with incoherent stories and an attitude of scorn, but I’m not it. Good-bye formerly Mighty Marvel. I’ll be back when you clean house.

Posted by H at November 5, 2004 01:14 PM

Comments

Huh.... glad I never read anything by Bendis or any of the Avengers titles. I haven't been too keen on Marvel as a whole lately either. Most of their stuff is crap, but I do really enjoy a few titles, most noteably Supreme Power, Cable/Deadpool, Astonishing X-Men, and District X. Everything else, well, I ocassionally pick up, but most of the time I leave it on the shelf. DC, Dark Horse, and Devil's Due have been putting out too good of stuff to ignore so I've made the switch.

I guess the recent awful Marvel storylines (Disassembled, Sins Past, etc) shows the total lacking of edition. JMS has a contract that frees him from being edited and Brevoort clearly didn't touched Bendis' Avengers. It's sad.

In the end, it's Brevoort, Axel Alonso and others that will look like morons for allowing all these shit stories being published.

Posted by: Alex Mandarino at November 5, 2004 08:50 PM

Avengers Disassembled (this is critique) – It stunk. The story rambled on like a drunken fight scene in an infomercial. It crossed over into titles that made little effort to engage the core Disassembled story. It killed characters instead of utilizing the ubiquitous Marvel third way out strategy. The art went from mediocre to poor to just plan irregular. They released a directors cut; whatever save it for the trades. Captain America got all teary eyed for more then half of the story; a completely ineffectual veteran of multiple wars who has never had anyone close to him die in combat? When did they map this out, before or after the dog ate their home work?

Bendis’ marching orders (this is cynicism)– “You can’t kill Aunt May to make way for Uncle Ben’s resurrection and subsequent love affair with Norman Osborne. Oh and it can’t be revealed that Bucky’s corpse is an HIV positive clone of Xorn unless it’s really a humdinger of a yarn that involves killing a lot of characters that Roy Thomas brought on board. Other than that here’s your list of people without marketing tie-ins in the next five fiscal years. And here’s your lunch. Now go out there and make us proud.”

Marvel doesn’t care about us (this is a rant) - Marvel is a corporation that spits out Icons and franchises them for greater financial returns then could be had by simply publishing books, magazines et al. In short they are an idea mill (house of ideas anyone). They create something from almost nothing then license the hell out of it. The end product is a seemingly self regenerating pile of pirate treasure that would make Scrooge McDuck envious. The Avengers, Spider-man and The X-Men are examples of properties that the corporation must juggle in order to maintain the highest percentage of profile for the least amount of loss while investing in the potential of greater revenues being earned in upcoming movie deals, toy-lines or marketing tie ins with other corporate entities. My point here is that Marvel doesn’t care about the Fan persons or the general readership a whole lot and probably hasn’t since before I started collecting comics and subsequently quit back in the eighties because of similar shenanigans (we blamed Jim Shooter back then). This can’t be a surprise to anyone that reads these comics often enough to make their way through the continuity quagmire of the 616 with out their heads exploding. Marvel doesn’t love you, it loves its property. It will bring anyone back to life to make a buck and it will announce deaths months in advance if it helps reduce the financial loss of printing and distributing a comic until the next licensing windfall takes place. It’s a corporation, an entity of the market that is little more than a life support system for accountants and lawyers. It’s a traffic intersection for abstract ideas reaped from others work then tacked down on endless reams of paper representing a successive array of agreements between involved parties to make money. They never signed a contract with us nor do they acknowledge that they have created us therefore they have no responsibility to us. If you hadn’t surmised yet, their responsibilities, in no particular order are to their share holders, Coca-Cola, Burger King and Paramount Pictures among others. But I double dog dare you to write your congress person demanding a Fan person’s bill of rights. Maybe then we could get back to reading the damn things because they are good instead of collecting them for the potential flaws that compels the speculation that rewards the market but not the reader in the house that ideas built. ‘Nuff Said

Posted by: Diego Bobby at November 6, 2004 02:21 PM

Well said H. This is why I don't read so-called "Marvel Universe" books. (I do like some MAX titles. Of course, DC is no better, either, really, with the very badly thought-out Identity Crisis.)

I'm with Fred -- I had given Tom Brevoort MUCH more credit than this -- he had always struck me as the new generation of Mark Gruenwald. And maybe this was mandated from higher up, but even so, it seems like just a few minutes of reflection or discussion would have shown that this didn't work.

I think it really comes down to nobody has EVER, in 40 years, truly understood what Wanda's power was -- each writer could (and did) redefine it to be whatever the plot required.

I get the "Armageddon 2001" feeling here -- this was set up to be the work of Hank Pym under Loki's thrall (there are STRONG Pym connections to all the dead characters except Jack of Hearts, who was used as a weapon). THAT would be a bookend to the series -- the first villain and a character who has a HISTORY of mental breakdowns. Instead, we have to take down another woman. Damn, comics is misogynistic anymore. (as you pointed out, it's Carol Danvers who is the spokesperson for the quitting idea)

Posted by: Jim Kosmicki at November 7, 2004 08:55 AM

Man, between this and other reviews, I'm very glad I'm not that big of an Avengers fan. It sounds like the only good that's come out of this train wreck of a story is this parody.

It's stuff like this that has led me to ween myself off of Marvel, honestly.

Posted by: Mel at November 10, 2004 07:11 PM

These are all great comments that mirror my own
feelings perfectly. Im disillusioned with the whole
comic industry at this point, especially Marvel's
treatment of classic characters. The "new, hip, edgy"
attitude and appearance just doesn't cut it with me.
Its essentially the Poochification of comics (Simpsons
viewers know what I mean). How do these writers
even get their jobs? And how do artists justify their
work when all they do is draw panel after panel of
talking heads? Even the action scenes just look like
highly stylized still drawings. I'm spending my money
on old comics. Heck, I got the entire run of The Thing
for about $8. Thats better than getting 2 or 3 issues
of some painted talking heads!

Posted by: Psykoduck at November 11, 2004 09:33 PM

I agree that the whole Dissasembled story line was garbage. But one question: the last panels of issue 500 shows a female character speaking with a male character. The male asks why don't we kill them all now. The female rebukes him and tells him he's an idiot and that they must suffer more. Presumably the female was Wanda.The male? We've still no answer.

Thoughts?

Posted by: michael b at November 12, 2004 01:07 AM

to answer michael b,

the "loyalist response": Wanda's lost her grip on reality and the inner monologue should not be considered legit.

the "honest response": Bendis lost his grip on reality and his written dialogue should not be considered legit.

Posted by: analyst12 at November 12, 2004 01:57 PM

I just finished writing to Marvel a long email on this messed up issue of Avengers Disassembled. Bendis is definitely a woman hater for making the Scarlet Witch a cold blooded killer. In his "New Avengers" line-up he has Spiderwoman as the only female in the team. What's that all about. Worst of all Magneto pops out of nowhere to take Wanda away with no one lifting a finger. Bendis is so off on the writing style of the Avengers. If this is what we have to look forward to in Marvel universe, than can count me out.

Posted by: Manny Rey at December 13, 2004 12:27 AM

In my teens I had two genuine passions: Comics and Video Games. As an adult, I still probably spend $1,000 per year on various games, but if I have spent $50 in any of the last five years on comics.

Clearly, my loss of passion in comics has nothing to do with my putting aside 'childish things' as I have become an adult. It is a direct result of comics becoming much worse, since the late-80s. Marvel Comics is by far the most depressing. The first and second generation Marvel writers and artists did some of the best work ever done in the medium. The popularity of the 'Spider-Man' films speaks to the enduring nature of the Lee-Ditko work on that title.

However, for most of the past twenty years of material produced by Marvel has been routinely dreadful. There have been a few bright spots (the Peter David run on 'The Hulk' comes to mind), but for the most part it has been a lot of incoherent story-telling with derivative art-work that fails to serve the story. My question is: why?

DC is owned by a big corporation and (while they certainly are not uniformly great, or even very good) the best comic work has since the all too brief Reign of the Indepndents a lot of the best work has come from them (i.e. Mark Waid & Alex Ross' 'Kingdom Come', Neil Gaiman's 'Sandman', Grant Morrison's 'Invisibles' & 'JLA' and Jeph Loeb & Tim Sales's 'Long Halloween' & 'Superman: For All Seasons' ). The Image defections hurt Marvel, but do you really think 75 issues of Rob Liefeld on 'The Avengers' would've changed things?

Posted by: Dean at December 14, 2004 07:20 PM

Most of what "H" wrote about Avengers 503 and Marvel in general I absolutely agree with and have expressed similar sentiments on other comics boards.

Marvel Comics is rapidly falling apart and the "we'll cool" attitude the powers that be express is surely a sign of self-delusion.

I have cut back severly on the number of Marvel Comics I purchase, once upon a time I bought nearly everything they published, now I buy a select few.

The Avengers are gone and the best way to remember them is to not buy New Avengers and Young Avengers. Perhaps when it hits them in the pocketbook, the idiots in charge at Marvel will be shaken from their ego-induced trances and realize they are destroying their industry.

Posted by: Jeff at December 18, 2004 10:30 AM

I'm glad the Vision, Ant-Man, Jack of Hearts, and Hawkeye died. I'm glad the Avengers were disassembled. I'm glad the whole damn marvel universe was shaken up and I'm glad whiney cry-baby readers are leaving the ranks.
Why? Because life is rough, Captain America and his friends walk away from near death experiences on a daily basis and they shouldn't! It's not realistic. I understand that comic characters are hard to think up and then after you invest years of origin stories and character building it's not easy to let them die. But the fact is that strong, good and worthwhile people die every day...why does Iron-Man get to live? Why does Cap always just nearly save his own ass? It's not real.
Avengers disasembled is real, it's what should have happened years ago. And it should happen more often. I understand why it doesn't but that doesn't take away from the fact that a lightweight like the Wasp should have been crushed under some villain's foot long ago, how she's still alive is a mystery to me.
Anyway. thanks Mr. Bendis...it's about time. Can't wait for you to write the X-men and kill off Cyclops, Beast, and any other hero lucky enough to still be alive after the ten million beatings they've recieved.

Posted by: Mike at December 23, 2004 07:45 PM

Avengers Disassembled is real?

Whatever you're smoking you shouldn't do it while driving.

Veteran super-people do not let themselves spontaneously detonate just because the thing strapped to their back... which they could take off... catches on fire.

Heck, even in real life that never happens.

A mass slaughter within a short period of time is never realistic in a comic book if the prescedent is that the people survive longer intervals with a lesser density of death.

It's like expecting a small town's population to suddenly equal that of New York City while nothing happens to draw people to the town, nothing makes the town more interesting, and the birth rate remains the same.

Actually, the only way to manage a mass slaughter like that is to have a reality-bending character bend reality and null prescendent... and probability... which isn't realistic either.

Mike needs a reality check. We don't read comics to get our daily dose of the real world. IT"S COMICS you twit! Expecting reality in a superhero comic is like expecting reality in Star Trek...When's the last time you saw a cop with a phaser?

Avengers. How the mighty have fallen. I haven't seriously collected Marvel or DC comics since the late 80s. There have been a few exceptions here and there, but for the most part they've been confused drivel.

Most of the time companies only kill characters when A: It makes a decent story or B: They've run out of ideas to use with that character.

I don't have a problem with method A, but companies rarely ever use that method anymore. It's exactly why there's a cliche joke about nobody ever really dying in comics. They always come back.

As to the "New Avengers", Spider Man is and shall always be a solo act. Guest stars are good, but he works best on his own. Besides which, putting both the spiders on the team is just asking for confusion.

Wolverine is an X Man. period. He doesn't have the style or public opinion to function properly as a high profile Avenger.

Seriously, I do not understand how they can't achieve functional continuity. Nobody really cares that Superman is actually pushing 70. That's real world age, and comics don't conform to the real world. I mean three Spider Man comics might take place during a two day period, but three months go by in the real world.....

Suspension of disbelief covers the small
inconsistencies that the extended time lapse causes.
So that the Batman that ran around in the 70s is still
basically the same guy that's wandering the Gotham nightlife now. And people don't mind so long as the tales are worth reading...... They aren't anymore.

All it really takes is for the people writing these
things to pay attention to what each other is writing.
You can't do a shared world writing project and act
independantly of the other writers....It just doesn't
work.

Sorry if I'm ranting, but it's been a sore spot for me since DC had the original "Crisis". I liked the
story, and it was a good way of resetting the
continuity, but half the writers proceeded to ignore
what was going on elsewhere after that, causing them
to need yet another 'reset'. The Legion is only just
now sorting out the mess it all caused. How? By
resetting for the third time! All they're managing to
do is cause all the good stories from past years to be
forgotten. Is that really the way to pay proper
homage to, say, Gardner Fox? Ignoring everything he contributed to the comics world?

For a long time I felt that Marvel was playing it
smart. They didn't reset, they fixed problems
in-house by coming up with plausible answers to the
few difficulties that arose. And they mostly ignored
the 'character has been around for 40 years and looks 20' thing. Now it seems they too have fallen prey to the 'make more money with less creativity' bug. They just want to redo old tales because the writers have gotten too lazy to come up with new ones.

They need to start hiring people that actually
care about the comics they write, or draw, or ink, or
whatever....

Until DC and Marvel can do that, I'll stick to the
independants, if anything at all. Oh, how I miss the
days of Concrete and Justice Machine........and Badger..... (I'm an eclectic reader, but it still has to be good.)

Posted by: Joe Losh at January 3, 2005 10:58 PM

Wake up and smell the coffee. Although I didn't care much for the whole "Disassembled" plot I think that Joe blow is making up half the shit about Marvel in his head. Yeah things have changed writers are different but do you really think that a company would mock and make fun of its readers?? Come on, wake up man we pay their bills. You sound like a whiny little baby.

If you don't like it, don't buy it.

JD

Posted by: JD at January 30, 2005 02:31 PM

Given that Marvel regularly says that the comics company is just "Character and concept" "research and development", that Marvel Comics is just "R&D" and that Marvel Enterprises does in fact make the majority of its income, in fact all that's neccessary to keep the entire corporate entity afloat, through the lisecensing of its properties for movies and other media, then I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't take their READERS seriously. JD, we don't pay their bills. SPIDER-MAN 2 paid serious bank.

We don't like it and we don't buy it, that will cancel some individual titles, but an attitude like that won't sink the company. Marvel relies on movies and television. This short-sighted attitude will doom them in the long run, as they eventually run out of stuff to liscense and use but I assure you that in the short run they need not give half a shite about you or me or our opinions because sales of New Avengers or Marvel Knights 4 or MK Spider-Man or New X-men are not going to save Marvel from inquiring debt-collectors.

They don't have to care about you, so what warm-and-fuzzy instinct within you makes you think that they do? You just want to believe the best of people?

Something similar was tried several years back, to about equal lack of interest on the part of the readers...

Anyone remember the "Scourge / Justice is Served" storyline from various Marvel titles in the 80s? 30+ Supervillains were killed off (a large number in a massacre in Captain America 319, if memory serves me correctly) by a vigilante who was then killed themselves (in Cap 320)... then nothing....

Admittedly, most of the deceased were not exactly high calibre characters (Birdman II, anybody? The Melter? The Hijacker?) but the whole thing seemed pointless....

Posted by: KJM at February 9, 2005 09:23 AM

Why am I here, 5+ years after this page was last commented? Because the wound doesn't go away.

The Avengers was my book; Hawkeye was my favorite character. This was a team of heroes defined not as "family" (FF, who I also love) or "oppressed minority" (a zillion X-books, not so much love), but people who did the work, a group of heroes who came together as a band of brothers (and sisters) out of a sense of responsibility. And what does Bendis do?

He turns them into unprofessional dolts, from weepy Cap to "OMG, my quiver is on fire! Time for suicide, I guess!" Hawkeye. Gee, one wonders how Avengers #20, where a bound Cap leaps to his (seemingly-inescapable) death to preserve the honor of the Avengers (rather than let the Swordsman extort his way onto the team), trusting implicitly that Clint, Wanda and Pietro will save him, ever got printed. Bendis's one-dimensional writing consists of things BMB thinks are "cool", regardless of whether the characters would actually say them…stupid "small talk" about sex or pizza or whatever, "snarky" comments delivered by inappropriate characters at inappropriate moments, and women being dumb sluts (yeah, Jan would just casually mention Wanda's DEAD KIDS during a sex chat, surrrre) or quitters (after Busiek had rightly showed Iron Man upset about Natasha's post-Onslaught dissolution of the team, Tony gets to pick up the pieces again after another broad lets the boys down) or crazy (Wanda murders everybody, surrre). It's unreadable sludge, and the less said about the "art" the better. (Yes, colorists, you can paint now. Don't. Just tell a story.)

But of course, it was all to pave the way from Bendis's great New Concept…Marvel's JLA! Stick Spidey, who doesn't like to leave NY, on a world-trotting team, when he's congenitally a solo act. Wolverine? Sure, why not? As one of the early "New Avengers" LPs sneered "A company that wants to make money! Horrors!" (or the equivalent, I'm too disgusted to actually look up the quote). Never mind that Logan has no logical reason to be there, nor do the Avengers a reason to want him. Have Peter just casually reveal his secret ID, which he nearly had a heart attack when Daredevil figured it out. Just keep telling "cool", "hardcore" stories, with no regard for the feel of the book, the history of the characters, or believable characterization.

It's an unreadable mess now, the whole MU. Gwen Stacy had sex with Norman Osborn. Bucky was always spying on Cap, their whole friendship was a lie. Spidey sells his out his marriage to get a favor out of Mephisto. Half the heroes were replaced by Skrulls, and none of the others could tell. (And don't get me started on Jan's assinine death…oh, wait, the Founding Avenger they killed was the girl. What a shock. Not.) And so on.

Yeah, Clint comes back…to follow up his character-destructive affair with Jan (gross and unrealistic on so many levels) with what's essentially his raping an amnesiac Wanda. Yay.

(Okay, the bit where Iron Man offers a resurrected Clint Cap's shield and Clint tells Tony to shove it sounds like it might be fun to read. But that just shows that there were much better characters for the new Cap [I have no problem killing Steve; he has very little interior life and I think it's profoundly patriotic if the idea of "Captain America" survives him] than the ultimate shark-jump, i.e., Bringing Back Bucky. Sam, Clint, Rick Jones, Nomad, USAgent and Sharon Carter all would have been better candidates for the flag-suit. Sigh.)